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Information Hiding and Abstraction
Information hiding and abstraction is defined as “the process of removing physical, spatial, or temporal details or attributes in the study of objects or systems to focus attention on details of greater importance.”1
I lumped together two slightly different ideas in computer science in the title of this chapter; they are different but related, and for the purpose of thinking about fundamental principles for software engineering, they are best considered together.
Abstraction or Information Hiding
I conflate these ideas because I don’t think that the difference between the two is enough to really concern us. What I am talking about here is drawing lines, or seams, in our code so that when we look at those ...
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